Food & Agriculture Education Venues

What a teaching greenhouse brings back to the school

Since the Food and Agriculture Education Act came into force, schools have a legal basis for food-and-agriculture education and more funding to apply for. But funding has to be won and results delivered, and the officer in charge needs something concrete, showable and repeatable next year. The greenhouse is not the goal; it is what makes those things possible.

• A deliverable result—the venue itself is the most convincing page in the final report: completion photos, sessions and participants you can count, student work you can show.
• A campus highlight—sited well, it becomes the fixed stop on parents' days, official visits and press tours.
• A base for next year's application—with a venue in place, the next curriculum, teacher-training or industry-partnership proposal has something concrete to build on.
• No greenhouse knowledge required—you state the educational goal, the headcount and the timeline. We turn space planning, structure, climate control and safety into text and drawings your proposal can use as they are.

Six kinds of client, six sets of conditions

• Primary and secondary schools—a whole class enters at once, the teacher must see everyone, and nobody tends it over the holidays. Those three facts set aisle width, sight lines and how fault-tolerant the systems have to be.
• Universities and departments—teaching and research usually share one house. Independently controlled zones, readable data and reproducible conditions decide whether the results can be published.
• Farmers' associations and production groups—the audience is working farmers, so the point is repeatability. A demonstration site has to compare methods side by side and take visitors without disturbing the crop.
• Local government and agriculture bureaus—public tendering and handover follow set procedures. Structural calculations, material certificates, as-built drawings and warranty terms all belong in the tender documents from the start.
• Farms and leisure-agriculture operators—opening to visitors without disrupting the crop or the daily work means separating the visitor route from the working area. Where the hands-on area sits, how it is paved and shaded, decides whether two groups can be hosted at once.
• Design consultants and regional-revitalisation teams—the overall plan already has a lead and the greenhouse is one item within it. We can supply structural and climate-control specifications and drawings to fit the existing schedule, or come in directly as the build subcontractor.

Planning can be commissioned on its own, before there is a construction budget

Many organisations come to us while writing a proposal and chasing funding, before any construction budget exists. Planning and construction can be commissioned separately: you first obtain specifications and drawings that can be tendered and compared, then procure the build under your own rules.

• Planning and design only—suited to organisations applying for a grant, needing a layout and cost estimate as an attachment, or required to tender openly. The drawings and specifications are written so you can compare bids, not to lock the work to us.
• Planning and construction together—suited to organisations with funding in place that want a single party accountable through to handover. Structure, climate control and teaching-aid details are handled by one team, so interface problems do not land on you.

Build it to production specifications and the first term will show you why that fails

1. Aisles carry thirty people, not one cart—a production greenhouse only needs an aisle wide enough for a harvest cart. A teaching greenhouse takes a whole class at once, lets them gather round a bed and lets the teacher reach any group. Aisle width and turning space are sized from headcount, not from the crop.
2. Bench height has to match the user—there is more than 30 cm between a third-grader and an undergraduate, and a wheelchair user needs clear space under the bench. Height-adjustable benches are not an upgrade here; they decide whether everyone can actually take part.
3. What is normally hidden has to be visible—the lesson is often below the surface. Root-observation windows, transparent substrate tanks, exposed colour-coded irrigation lines and dosing tanks with visible gauges are redundant in production and the primary teaching aids here.
4. A different safety standard—no sharp corners or exposed threads within reach, impact-resistant covering instead of glass, heating and electrical equipment separately guarded and locked, chemicals and materials in a controlled zone.
5. Two months a year, nobody is there—a term-based site sits empty over the summer, precisely Taiwan's hottest and most typhoon-prone months. Automatic irrigation needs power-failure protection, climate control needs fault alerts, and vents need a safe fail position.
6. Handover is judged on documents—public-sector and school handovers check whether structural calculations, material test certificates, as-built drawings and warranty terms are all present. We start assembling that at the specification stage.

Equipment you can point at while teaching

The most valuable design decisions in a teaching greenhouse expose what is normally hidden. Production houses bury pipework and tuck control panels into corners because that gets them out of the way. A teaching greenhouse does the opposite: students should see where the water comes from, what the roots look like, and how the numbers move.

• Root-observation window—a hinged transparent panel on the side of the bed, showing root distribution and substrate moisture directly.
• Height-adjustable bench—bench height adjusts to the age group, with clear knee space for wheelchair access — in line with universal design (UD).
• Exposed, labelled pipework—irrigation, drainage and fertigation lines are exposed and colour-coded, so they can be pointed at while teaching.
• Readable environment data—temperature, humidity, light and EC/pH shown in one place and exportable, turning observation into recordable work.
• Independently zoned beds—one bed per group with independent watering, so controlled comparisons and group lessons run in the same house.
• Visitor route and viewing area—visitors see clearly from outside the crop area, avoiding trampling, contamination and disease introduction.

Projects for schools, research institutes and agricultural research stations

Teaching and research sites hold documentation, handover and reproducibility to a stricter standard than production sites. Projects we have delivered include the NTU Precision Greenhouse, the NPUST Green-Energy Greenhouse, Academia Sinica, the KDAIS Natural-Light Climate Room, the AERC Precision Greenhouse and the Dr. Cecilia Koo Botanic Conservation Center structural greenhouse.

Design Movement on Campus — Guangxing Elementary School, Changhua: “Sugarcane Canteen”

A campus project we executed jointly with Lee Chia-Chen Architects. The space at Guangxing Elementary was a central kitchen doubling as a dining hall, with lessons, cooking and lunch all squeezed into one room. The school did not want a new greenhouse; it wanted the existing space turned into a food-and-agriculture venue that could host lessons and be shown to visitors. Guangxing sits in Erlin, Changhua, sugarcane country, which is where the name “Sugarcane Canteen” comes from. The exposed-brick planter in front of the classroom grows sugarcane planted by the pupils themselves, who take home what they grew on graduation day. HWA-NAN’s part was construction drawings and construction; the small planter is fitted with a simple remote-controlled automatic sprinkler system, so it can be managed from a phone on weekends or rainy days without a site visit.

• For the school: the renovated façade is now the first thing seen from the gate, and the project was published by the Taiwan Design Research Institute as a Design Movement on Campus showcase.
• For upkeep: the remote automatic sprinklers mean the general-affairs office does not have to assign someone to water daily; it can be adjusted from a phone on weekends and rainy days, and keeps running through the holidays.
• For the curriculum: from seedling to transplant to harvest, everything happens on campus with a local cane grower as partner; the cane each cohort plants is harvested and taken home on graduation day, so every class runs one complete cycle.

One room, three configurations—the same room has to serve as classroom, kitchen and dining hall in one week. Eight yellow gradient sliding panels are what switch it: pushed to different positions, one space takes on a different use, so no separate room is needed for each.

• Classroom mode—the partitions close into one wall with the kitchen hidden behind and the class faces front.
• Kitchen / group-lesson mode—the partitions slide open to expose the kitchen and demonstration bench, so groups can work round the counter.
• Lunch mode—with the partitions repositioned the two sides link up, the tables are re-laid as a dining room, and the serving route from the central kitchen stays clear.

Before and after—the same spot. It was a central kitchen with equipment lined up against the walls and a dining table in the middle — dim, with circulation nobody had planned. Afterwards the kitchen and the teaching area are separated, and sliding partitions let one room take three different uses.

Project credits
Site｜彰化縣二林鎮廣興國民小學 (Guangxing Elementary School, Erlin, Changhua)
Brief｜Renovation of the central kitchen and dining room
Programme lead｜台灣設計研究院 (Taiwan Design Research Institute)
Design & delivery｜李佳臻建築師事務所＋華南溫室設計 (Lee Chia-Chen Architects + HWA-NAN Greenhouse Design)
Design lead｜李佳臻
Design team｜陳建維, 李杰庭, 薛光劭
Architectural photography｜丰宇影像 Yuchen Chao Photography
Film｜艾迪雀創意影像 EdiTrio Studio

This project was delivered under Design Movement on Campus, a programme led by the Taiwan Design Research Institute. Photos: programme case page; copyright retained by the rights holders.

Further reading: Design Movement on Campus case page — Guangxing Elementary School, Changhua

Where the funding comes from changes how the plan is written

The same teaching greenhouse needs entirely different documents and timelines depending on whether it runs on school funds, a grant programme or open tender. Grants have application windows and approval schedules; tenders have specification and comparability requirements; own funds can be phased. Common routes include school funds and the parents' association, local government or agriculture bureau programmes, central-government competitive grants, open tendering and design-build contracts, corporate sponsorship and CSR projects, and a phased build starting with phase one. Programme names, amounts and eligibility follow each year's announcements.

From establishing who uses it to the handover briefing

1. Establish who uses it, and how often—how many people at a time, what age, how many sessions a week, and whether it runs through the holidays.
2. Site survey and buildable envelope—drainage, sunlight, existing utilities, fire and egress routes, and the walking distance from the classroom.
3. Teaching scenarios and teaching-aid layout—the lesson flow is drawn as circulation and zoning first; then we decide which equipment becomes visible, touchable and recordable.
4. Specifications and tender documents—structural grade, material specifications, safety conditions and warranty scope written up so the work can be tendered, compared and signed off.
5. Construction, handover and briefing—after completion we brief teachers and facility staff on operation, routine maintenance and fault handling, and hand over as-built drawings and a maintenance manual.

We build the venue; the curriculum comes from specialist partners

Our expertise is planning, designing and building greenhouses, and turning equipment into usable teaching aids. The teaching itself comes from specialist partners: we can introduce food-and-agriculture instructors we have worked with, along with agricultural authorities, university departments and education teams, and help you connect the venue to the curriculum.

• If you already work with instructors or an education team, we adjust the venue design to fit their existing lesson plans.
• Where no instructor is in place we can help approach outside specialists; the person, credentials, scope, availability and fee are confirmed before any commitment, and the decision remains yours.
• Who handles day-to-day cultivation and site management is agreed with the operator before handover, so the facility is not left without anyone to run it.

Four things to include when you get in touch

With these four, our reply can already set out a suitable scale, a workable way to commission the work, and possible survey dates.

• Your organisation, contact details, and who we should deal with.
• The site location and available area — photos or a floor plan if you have them. If the site is not settled yet, just say so.
• Who will use it, how many at a time, and how lessons and instructors are currently arranged.
• The funding source or the programme you plan to apply to, and when you need it finished.

Tel +886-7-6167497 · contact@hwanangreenhouse.com · Office hours Mon–Fri 08:00–17:00 (UTC+8).